Nat Zeno
`IT’S a buyers market” is the more frequent reply to any question regarding the First Annual Southern African International Film and Television Market, but are there going to be any buyers present? By the time you read this all these and more questions will have been answered.
>From November 13 to 17 Longkloof Studios in Cape Town will be a frenzy of delegates from across South Africa, Africa and the rest of the world (in that order), as they try to find funding or partners or distribution for their feature films, short films, documentaries, TV series, dreams, visions and/or concepts.
The co-production market brings financiers and producers from all over the world, looking to develop and finance projects together with local industry folk and potential partners.
As well as a series of workshops, the co- production market also features a series of closed-door pitches in which local producers and writers will have the opportunity to convince some major players to produce their projects here or abroad. Handled by Katrina Wood (who has a reputation for this kind of thing and has handled similar media exchange projects before, such as Cinemart at the Rotterdam Film Festival), the co-production market is where the principal focus will be, with over 200 projects entered.
It proves that there are people out there writing and conceptualising. What this market will highlight is the quality of that material and how South Africa’s product stands in relation to the international marketplace.
All the usual films about Nelson, Brenda and about the past are being dragged out for screening, but the interesting ones to watch are going to be Carsten Rauch’s Eating Fish – the last in Big World Cinema’s Cutting Edge series and the first short film to be granted completion finance by the “new” Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology – and Jump the Gun, a Channel Four/Xencat production. This is the film that opens the market and is shrouded in secrecy and embargo forms.
The market will have a large international attendance, with names like Paramount, Film Four, Viacom and Warner Brothers being tossed around and included somewhere in the schedule among the seminars, workshops, cocktail parties. Probably the single most important event is the announcement, finally, by the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, Lionel Mtshali, of a film development strategy for South Africa. This little moment could make or break the future of a local film language.
For the next few days Longkloof Studios will be a pile of paper and frustration as people try to get documents into other people’s hands, grab five minutes of someone else’s time and attempt to slip impossibly large documents under hotel doors.